Skipping song lyrics cause motherly bias

Photo: Skipping Workshops

Skipping songs varied from one prairie town to another. One day we went from Ryley to nearby Tofield. While we waited for Dad, I watched some kids skipping in the street, and told my mother I wanted to play with them.

Very unfairly, I thought, Mom made me stay in the car. These kids, she judged, were "saucy."

From the open car window, I admired a girl with pretty curls and a very dirty face. Wistful, I watched from sidelines while she shrieked with laughter as she jumped in while the others sang:

Help! Murder! Police!

Melody fell in the grease.

She laughed so hard she fell in the lard.

Help! Murder! Police!

Melody, I thought. What a lovely name. And like my own name, it meant music. But the first lines of the skipping song were not nice. That, I decided, must be what set Mom against the kids.